Warehouse with high shelves

ABSTRACT

A warehouse building with high shelves has a concrete and steel construction in which the concrete structure assumes all the static load-bearing functions while the steel structural elements are shelves which serve only to carry pallets and goods loaded on the pallets.

United States Patent Flosser Dec. 23, 1975 WAREHOUSE WITH HIGH SHELVES [56] References Cited [75] Inventor: Walter Flosser, Schopfheim, UNITED STATES PATENTS Germany 3,735,548 9/1970 Ferrari 52/236 [73] Assignee: Oehler-Wyhlen-Lagertechnik A.G., FOREIGN NT OR APPLICATIONS Aarau, Switzerland 932,610 7/1963 United Kingdom 52/236 [22] Filed: Aug. 23, 1974 [21] App]. No.: 499,921 Primary Examiner.lohn E. Murtagh Related Us. Application Data Attorney, Agent, or Fzrm-Abraham A. Saffitz [63] Continuation-impart of Ser. No. 307,876, Nov. 20, i 1972, abandoned. ABSTRACT [30 Foreign Application p i Data A warehouse building with high shelves has a concrete Nov 24 1971 Switzerland 53 5 687 N1 and steel construction in which the concrete structure assumes all the static load-bearing functions while the [52] U 8 Cl 52/36, 211/90 steel structural elements are shelves which serve only [51 irr'dci. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII..... A4 7D 1/00 to carry Palets and waded the [58] Field of Search 52/36; 214/16.4 R, 16.4 A, I

2l4/l6.4 B; 211/90, 96

2 Claims, 10 Drawing Figures a m/[v0 PMTE Z;

FOUNDATION 3;,

U.S. Patent Dec. 23, 1975 Sheet 2 of3 3,927,495

Sheet 3 of 3 3,927,495

US. Patent Dec. 23, 1975 WAREHOUSE WITH HIGH SHELVES CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION a. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a warehouse or store with high shelves for storing goods in bulk loads with standard measurements such as foodstuffs, paper, machine parts, motor cars, steel, textiles, chemicals, etc.

b. Prior Art Warehouses with high shelves known hitherto have been built according to the principle whereby the supporting frames take part in the supporting (load-bearing) function of the building in that they help to carry the roof and at the same time take up other vertical and transverse loads. Thus there have already been used constructions made completely of steel, of concrete and steel, of concrete only, or of concrete and wood.

These constructions did not, however, fully satisfy all demands made on high stack warehouses. In the first place, a warehouse plant must be built and maintained economically. Moreover, it must possess good surface and volume usability, it must fully meet the requirements for fire protection, and it must offer flexible adaptability such as for example, when a change of the storage from standard pallets to special pallets is made.

High stack warehouses are often equipped with automatic loading machines which are remotely controlled for the loading and unloading of individual loads. For the accommodation of individual loads the shelves must, therefore, be very accurately aligned which until now could only be achieved by correspondingly expensive constructions.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is now proposed to provide a high stack warehouse or store of concrete and steel construction in which the concrete structure assumes all of the static functions for the take-up and neutralization of forces, while the steel structural elements serve only for the taking up of pallet loads in shelf stacks.

According to the invention a high stack warehouseor store comprises a concrete structure and a steel support frames and is characterized in that the concrete structure has at least one constructional load-bearing wall section which takes over all the static functions for the take-up and neutralization of forces, to which wall section supporting shelves in the form of steel structures are connected which take up only the individual loads of the stored goods and are not involved in the structural load-bearing structure of the warehouse or store.

With this construction, the wall section serves for the taking up of: roof loads, the own weight of the wall, and wind forces as well as for the taking up of the support reactions of steel carriers which are fastened thereto for each load rating. In addition, the wall section has advantages as a more secure smoke and fire protection means between the individual warehouse alleys and as means for separating orders from alley to alley in the warehouse. A further advantage is that the warehouse can be divided by means of the wall section into different climatic and temperature zones.

According to an advantageous preferred embodiment, the wall section can be secured in a frame which consists of a ground plate, transverse stiffening ribs and the roof of the warehouse.

In that way the concrete wall carries vertical loads only and serves for the longitudinal propping or stiffening of the warehouse building.

The concrete stiffeningribs provide the transverse stiffening of the building and also take up a certain part of the vertical load support. The shelf construction, made of sections which have been hot-rolled or coldrolled, may be connected without full restraint, that is to say, not rigidly, to the concrete wall over cross beams with the help of front posts and longitudinal shelf beams, and in this way do not require joints with corresponding junction or nodal points.

Thus the load take-up takes place in two directions and is displaceable in a ratchet-like manner. This flexibility would not' be available in a pure steel construction since there, each relocation of the nodal pionts necessitates a complete change in the construction.

According to a further preferred embodiment of the invention, the load carriers can be formed as jutting out or overhanging tubular or section beams, advantageously connected with additional sloping fastenings and connected without full restraint to the wall. A further preferred constructional form of the proposed structure may consist in that on both sides of the tubular or section beams projecting gussets are secured which carry the shelf surface on which the sides of the bottoms of the pallets can be supported.

For securing the tubular or section beams the latter may have a headplate with a through-bore on both sides, into which the heads of screwbolts are inserted which are mounted in bores in the walls fast against pulling out.

1 BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The invention is illustrated, by way of examples only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein FIG. 1 is a schematic representation of a two high stack warehouse or store walls in a concrete and steel structure,

FIG. 2 shows a single concrete wall section,

FIG. 2a is a partial perspective view of a wall section as in FIG. 2,

FIG. 3 is a horizontal section through a schematically illustrated high stack warehouse with six concrete walls,

FIG. 4 shows schematically the arangementof the steel load carriers in vertical section and in side view, FIG. 5 is a section along the line 55 of FIG. 4, FIG. 6 is a section along the line 6 6 of FIG. 4,

FIG. 7 is a front view of the securing arrangement of a load carrier,

FIG. 8 is the same securing arrangement in side view and vertical section, and

FIG. 9 is a'more detailed side view of the steel load carrier of FIG. 5.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Referring to the drawings, a high stack warehouse plant has supporting frames which take part in the bearing structure of the plant in which each supporting frame is constructed on steel reinforced concrete and has props or posts for taking up the shelf surfaces. The reinforced concrete frame is formed as a wall section 1.1 and is so dimensioned that it can take up the longitudinal and transverse forces arising in use. Expansion grooves are provided in the vertical direction in the form of cut outs in which transverse wall or stiffening ribs 1.2 are maintained. The transverse stiffening ribs are provided in every second alley only between the wall section. The wall sections carry freely over-hanging steel load carriers for the support of the shelf bottoms which arrangement will be described in detail later on. I

From FIG. 2, itcan be seen that the concrete wall 1.1 is clamped between the transverse stiffening ribs 1.2. The ratio of wall thickness d (FIG. 1) and the projection length b of the stiffening ribs is approximately in accordance with the formula By way of example d cm and b 220 cm.

Thus the stiffening ribs take over the transverse strengthening of the building substantially exclusively.

The steel structure for the shelves in FIG. 2 consists of front posts or supports 1.3 which serve exclusively to take up the vertical loads of the stored goods and which are connected without full restraint to the concrete structure byway of the through-going longitudinal shelf carriers via cross beams 1.5. Thus the steel structure does not needany joints or junctions with the corresponding nodal points. Consequently, this arrangement is advantageously adaptable since it has no structural supporting function and serves merely as the primary storage construction for the goods to be stored. Since the front posts 1.3 have no structural supporting function, one can choose the optimum spacing between the posts in accordance with the maximum load magnitude of the goods to be stored. Furthermore, the construction of the front posts 1.3 is fixed without any possibil ity of deviation in both directions in the plane of each pallet so that a very advantageously small and unsupported effective length results.

While in FIG. 2, the concrete wall 1.1 is shown with transverse stiffening ribs 1.2 projecting on both sides, it can be seen from FIG. 3 that according to another particularly advantageous embodiment the transverse stiffening ribs 1.2 are formed so as to project from one sideonly.

If one desires to build the concrete wall to be even more resistant to bending by a small increase in its wall thickness, for example by an amount of -25 cm. the possibility arises of suspending the carrier cross beams, 1.5 and longitudinal carriers 1.4 without front posts, i.e. byoverhanging and restraining them to the wall 1.1. This advantageous variant of the invention is shown in FIGS. 4 to 9 I Each load carrier consists of a tubular or section beam 4,6 secured to the wall section 1.1 and having an additional oblique fastening consisting of a loop strut 4.7. Further, gussets or straps 4.8 are secured to the tubular carriers 4.6 which carry support plates 4.9 on both sides, on which plates the pallets 4.10 to be stored can besupported. For the fastening of the tubular and section carriers holes are bored in the wall section 1.1 into which screw-bolts 4.11 are inserted fast against pulling out, Furthermore, aheadplate 4.12 is arranged on each tubular or section carrier 4.6 which is bored through and is secured to the wall sections 1.1 with the aid of the screw bolts 4.11. The adjustment for the tubular or section carriers takes place through a correspondingly delicate tightening of the screw nuts shown in FIG. 8. Should a greater adjustment be necessary, a headplate 4.12 with larger bolts may be used and between it the wall section 1.1 an intermediate plate 4.13 can be inserted which after adjustment is welded to the headplate 4.12.

It is furthermore important that the headplate and the gussets of the tubular or section carriers do not extend mutually at right angles exactly to each other, but instead, there should be provided a small vertical negative tolerance. Put it another way, the axis of the tubular or section carrier makes an angle somewhat smaller than with the plane of the headplate so that in the non-loaded condition the tubular or section carrier is somewhat under lifting stress.

The exact assembly then follows through regulation of the struts 4.7. In this way a small pretensioning results and thus also a better inherent stiffness of the non-loaded structure. Through the above-mentioned adjustments of the non-uniformities in the wall surfaces are easily compensated.

Further, as follows from FIG. 4, the strut or tensioning rod 4.7 connects the adjacent pressure rod (tube 4.6) with the adjacent headplate 4.12 arranged above it.

If a one-piece tensioning rod is used, then simultaneously a larger lateral safety spacing is achieved for the pallet to be supported.

The tubular or section wall carriers will be loaded in compression and bending. Should a load arise from one side only then one must add a torsional load to these loads. In the case of such a one-sided load the torsional movement is divided into forces which are conducted to the wall through the screw bolts. The gussets 4.8 are welded to the carriers 4.6 and are thus rendered fast against rotation.

The described construction for high stack warehouses thus makes the shelf elements independent of structural load bearing functions and in this way the optimization of the shelves of the point of view of economy will be dependent only on the size of the goods to be stored.

I claim as my invention:

1. A high stack warehouse building consisting essentially of:

a ground floor foundation;

a roof;

concrete wall sections forming high stack storage shelves on said ground floor foundation;

storage shelves of steel construction connected to said concrete wall sections;

said concrete wall sections being separated from each other to form narrow alleys;

said concrete wall sections provided with lateral stiffening ribs supporting said roof and the wall taking up loads on the high stack storage shelves;

said wall sections being secured rigidly on all sides of said roof and said ground floor foundation;

said shelves taking up the individual loads of the goods stored thereon without providing any structuralsupport for the building;

frames securing said wall sections;

each of said frames consisting of said ground floor foundation, said stiffening ribs for said wall sec- 7 a head plate arranged on each carrier which is secured on both sides of said carrier by screw-bolts in bores in the carrier for fastening said load carriers to the wall; and,

an intermediate plate which is inserted between the headplate and the wall section.

2. A high stack warehouse according to claim 1 wherein the axis of the carrier makes an angle smaller than with the plane of the headplate so that in the non-loaded condition said load carrier is under lifting SlII'CSSv 

1. A high stack warehouse building consisting essentially of: a ground floor foundation; a roof; concrete wall sections forming high stack storage shelves on said ground floor foundation; storage shelves of steel construction connected to said concrete wall sections; said concrete wall sections being separated from each other to form narrow alleys; said concrete wall sections provided with lateral stiffening ribs supporting said roof and the wall taking up loads on the high stack storage shelves; said wall sections being secured rigidly on all sides of said roof and said ground floor foundation; said shelves taking up the individual loads of the goods stored thereon without providing any structural support for the building; frames securing said wall sections; each of said frames consisting of said ground floor foundation, said stiffening ribs for said wall sections and a portion of the roof; said shelves including load carriers having an overhang and oblique struts to connect the associated wall section to the carriers; projecting plates on said carriers which are secured by way of gussets to the carrier which carry the shelves on which pallets are supported; a head plate arranged on each carrier which is secured on both sides of said carrier by screw-bolts in bores in the carrier for fastening said load carriers to the wall; and, an intermediate plate which is inserted between the headplate and the wall section.
 2. A high stack warehouse according to claim 1 wherein the axis of the carrier makes an angle smaller than 90* with the plane of the headplate so that in the non-loaded condition said load carrier is under lifting stress. 